Wednesday 16 May, 2018

Por Jayson McNamara

Wednesday 16 May, 2018

Por Jayson McNamara

The Central Bank was closely monitoring the exchange rate morning as it considered its next move to halt the ongoing devaluation of the national currency.

In early trading Friday, Banco Nación set a buying rate for the dollar of 24.80 pesos while the selling rate was 25 pesos.

The Central Bank will today again offer to buy US $5 billion at AR$25 to the US dollar, media reports suggested, repeating a strategy it used earlier in the week.

Treasurer Nicolás Dujovne recognised, in an interview with La Nación, that the government is having a hard time lowering inflation because “it is doing many things at once like normalising utility prices and recomposing Central Bank reserves”.

Transport Minister Guillermo Dietrich took a different tone, celebrating the impact of the rising dollar for some sectors of the economy.

“I don’t understand — they tell me — why everyone is worried about it (the exchange rate) because for us it’s the best thing in the world”, Dietrich added, citing tourism sector contacts in the northern city where hundreds of thousands of people travel each year to see the Iguazú Falls.